London, England: Adventure Day (Harry Potter Studio Tour Day!) Part 1

So to be completely honest the entire reason we came back to London this year, was to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour. Ty and I were HP fans already. We started the kids on the audiobooks about two years ago. They fell for the stories, hard! The kids and I have listened to the entire series about 4 or 5 times, entirely now. It’s what we listen to anytime we’re in the car. So we knew this was going to be a wonderful experience!

We didn’t have entrance tickets till 1pm, so we walked around downtown London from our hotel. Played at a playground and the started taking the train out to HP. It’s about a 25 minute ride. From there you jump on a dedicated HP bus which takes you right to the studio. Ty had read that if it’s not busy they may let you in ahead of your scheduled time. So we decided to go for it, and we managed to get in right after noon.

(Be forewarned there is an excessive amount of HP associated photos in this post.)

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I’m so proud of Ty on this day. He not only booked us the audio tour headsets, he got us the Official Guidebook, and he tolerated/supported the numerous gift shop stops throughout the tour! 🙂

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They also have these great little Passports (for free!) that you can grab at the entrance. It has you searching for snitches throughout the tour, and you get embossed stamps as well. It’s a great way to engage younger tour participants, or those who maybe aren’t huge fans. We were so busy looking at everything, we didn’t bother too much with the snitch hunt. But my kids did enjoy the embossing machines.

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They first show you a short clip about the studio and the history of the movies being made there. Then they take you right up to the entrance of the Grand Hall and you start the tour by walking through it. It was all dressed up for Christmas and was a great way to start the tour. It was a bit rushed since they continuously start off new tour groups in there. So if you’re hoping to linger and really enjoy the details, you just don’t get that kind of time.

The audio headsets were great, for giving full details about each station, along with additional video clips, and still photos. We’d read the average person can see everything in 3 hours. We got in just after noon, and left just after 6pm. And personally, this felt very rushed! Looking back at Ty’s photos, there was a whole area that I missed! So if you’re true fans, please allow yourselves plenty of time.

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From here we got to see the Gryffindor Common Room and the boys dormitory.

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More costumes and amazing set pieces.

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We got to walk through Dumbledors office. The attention to detail was incredible! It must have been an amazing experience to work on these movies.

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They had a fun quidditch exhibit and we could practice our broom skills. 😉

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The burrow!

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They had a dueling station thy was interactive. It was so neat, and the kids got to practice their moves!

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More amazing set pieces.

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They had a small set of the Forbidden Forest.

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I’m going to end this post here. There’s plenty more to come from the day and this was about where we snuck into the bathrooms to take a belated lunch break! 😆 We were no where near the cafeteria area and we desperately needed to refuel. So yeah, we blocked the handicap stall for like 5 minutes to stuff our faces and had a line of people waiting on us when we left. (Shame!)